'I'll kill the bitch, dammit!'

He screamed with red-streaked rage. His contorted face was caught in the flashing strobe lights of the police cruisers, illuminating his anger. He kicked at one of the policemen struggling to hold him, his foot landing on the officer's shin. The man yelped and fell aside, grabbing at his leg.

Tanny Brown stepped from the trailer's front stoop and walked toward the dead man's brother. He put himself directly in the man's vision.

'Shut up!' he shouted.

The wild man stared at him, hesitating momentarily in his push forward. Then he lurched again. I'll kill the bitch,' he screamed.

'That your brother?' Brown shouted.

The man twisted in the grasp of the policemen. 'She killed Buck, now I mean to do her. Bitch! You're dead!' he cried, directing his yell past Brown.

'Is that your brother?' Brown asked again, slightly quieter.

'You're dead, bitch! Dead!' the man snarled. 'Who's asking? Who're you, nigger?'

The racial epithet stung him, but he didn't move. He considered stepping up and feeding the man his fist, but then decided against it. The man had to be stupid to call him a name, but probably wasn't so stupid he wouldn't file a complaint. A brief vision of a stack of paperwork jumped into his sight like a mirage.

One of the officers trying to hold the man back freed his nightstick. Brown shook his head and stepped up so that his face was only a few inches away from the dead man's brother.

'I'm police Lieutenant Theodore Brown, asshole, and I'm gonna get pissed in one more second, and you don't want to have me on your case, asshole.'

The man hesitated. 'She killed him, the bitch.'

'You already said that.'

'What you gonna do about it?'

Tanny Brown ignored the question. 'That your gun?' he asked.

'Yeah, mine. He got it from me earlier.'

'Your gun? Your brother?'

'Yeah. You gonna arrest the bitch, or am I gonna have to kill her?'

The man's struggles had slowed, but his voice had gathered an angry, challenging edge.

'You knew he was gonna come over here?'

He told everyone at the bar.'

'What was the gun for?'

'He was just gonna scare her a little, like he did the other night.'

Brown turned and saw the uniformed officer standing in the light thrown from the trailer door, and the woman cowering behind the policeman. He turned back to the enraged man, who was standing still now, waiting, his arms still clasped by two officers.

The police lieutenant walked over to the dead man's body and looked down at it. Under his voice, he whispered, 'Can you hear me? You ain't worth the trouble.' Then he looked back at the brother.

'You gonna do something, or what?' the man demanded.

Tanny Brown smiled. 'Sure,' he said.

He turned to one of the crime-scene technicians. 'Tom, go get Missus Collins' shotgun.' The man went over to a cruiser and returned with the gun. Brown took the shotgun and jacked the pump action a single time, chambering a fresh round.

He looked over at the dead man's brother and smiled again. 'Give the shotgun back to Missus Collins,' he said loudly. He stared over at the man. 'Fred?' he called out in a loud voice. 'Officer Davis, you write Missus Collins up one of those tickets for dumping refuse without a permit. Pay a fifty-buck fine. And you call sanitation and tell them to come pick up this trash.' He pointed at the body at his feet.

'Hey,' said the man.

'That's right. Give her a ticket for shooting this piece of crap and dumping him out here.'

'Hey,' the man said again.

'Tell Missus Collins she dumps any more trash bodies in her front yard, it's gonna cost her fifty bucks every time.'

He aimed his index finger at the dead man's brother. 'Like this one here. Tell her she's got my permission to blow this sorry asshole's head off. But it's gonna cost her another fifty.'

'You can't do that,' the man said. His arms had dropped to his sides.

'You don't think so?' Brown said. He walked back to the man and shouted in his face. 'You don't think so?'

'Hey, Tanny!' cried one of the uniformed officers. I got fifty I can lend her.'

There was a burst of laughter from some of the other policemen.

'Sure,' came another voice. 'Hell, we can take up a collection. Cover her until she blows away all the assholes.'

'Put me in for ten, said one policeman, rubbing his shin.

'Hey,' said the man.

'Hey, what?' Tanny Brown demanded.

'You can't.'

'Watch what I can do,' the lieutenant said quietly. 'Arrest this man.'

'Hey!' the man said again as one of the officers slapped handcuffs around his wrists.

'Criminal trespass. Obstruction. Battery on a police officer. Harassment. And let's see, how about conspiracy to commit murder? That's for giving his damn dumb drunk brother a gun.'

'You can't,' the man said again. His voice had lost its rage.

'Those are all felonies, asshole. I'll bet you don't have a damn permit for that gun, either. And let's add driving under the influence.'

'Hey, I ain't drunk.'

Tanny Brown stared at the man. 'Take a good look,' he said quietly. 'You ever see this face again, and it's gonna be real trouble. Got that?'

'You can't do this.'

'Take him in,' Brown said to the uniformed officers. Show him a bit of country hospitality.'

'A pleasure,' murmured the man who had been kicked. He jerked the handcuffed man around savagely.

'Take it easy,' Brown said. The uniformed officer stared at the lieutenant. 'Okay, Brown added, smiling. 'Not too damn easy.' He whispered one more command. 'And make sure the bastard gets put in a cell with the biggest, meanest, rasty-ass black folks we've got in stir. Maybe they can teach him not to call people names.

Two of the officers burst into brief laughter.

Tanny Brown turned his back on the protesting man being dragged toward a squad car, walked back to the trailer, and spoke quietly to the woman cowering inside.

'Missus Collins, we got to go to the police station. We're gonna read you your rights down there. Then I want you to call up that attorney, have him come help you out. You got that?'

She nodded. 'I need to call my kids.'

'There'll be time for that.'

He turned to the uniformed officer. 'You get one of the female officers out here quick to transport her. See that she gets something to eat on the way.'

'What charge?' the policeman asked.

Tanny Brown turned, staring out at the sprawled lump that remained in the yard. 'How about discharging a firearm within town limits? That'll hold things until I talk to the state attorney.'

He went back outside and stood next to the body.

Stupid, he thought. So stupid.

He glanced down at his watch. A lot of dying tonight, he thought.

He looked at the dead man's eyes. The face faded, pushed out of the way by his memory of his first look at Joanie Shriver's body stretched out in the center of an embarrassed, angry group of searchers. They were standing at the edge of the swamp, beads of dirty-brown water and strands of green muck clinging to their boots and waders. He remembered wanting to touch her, to cover her, and forcing himself not to, steeling himself to the sturdy, official processing of violence.

He swallowed back the vision. It was all my fault, he thought. I will set it right. I will not lose that one.

Tanny Brown, struggling with visions of death, moved off slowly toward his squad car, believing nothing had ended that night. Not even the life demanded by the state.

It was hurrying toward dawn when Bruce Wilcox called. The first insinuations of light were cheating the darkness out of the trees and sky, giving the world edges and shapes.

Brown had spent the remainder of the night in taking a confession from Mrs. Collins; two hours of quiet, bitter history of sexual abuse and beatings, which had been, more or less, what he'd anticipated. The stories are always the same, he'd thought, only the victims change. He had then argued with a gruff assistant state attorney, irritated at being awakened, and negotiated with a divorce lawyer suddenly in over his head. Self-defense, he had insisted to the prosecutor, who had wanted her charged with second-degree murder. They had finally compromised on manslaughter, with the understanding that if there had been a crime committed that night, it paled in comparison to the crimes inflicted upon the woman.